Chapter 62: A Looming Threat
In a wide room on the upper floors of the Association building, Cedric Blackthorne sat comfortably, his chair turned toward the open window that offered a view of the chaos unfolding in the distance. But his sight didn’t stop at what was visible to the naked eye.
He saw far more than what appeared on the surface.
And there, beyond the various B-rank Beast Lords already present on the field, he caught the outline of something larger. Something more powerful. Enough to make his eyes narrow and his expression settle into something serious.
He rose slowly from his chair, his mind processing countless pieces of information per second.
He could tell this was only the beginning. Those five Beast Lords, already far too many, were merely the start.
Something far more terrifying was making its way toward the city, something that simple awakened couldn’t handle. Something that even elites would struggle with, at least those who hadn’t surpassed B-rank.
’Tch. Seems they were right. This year’s tide is considerably worse than previous ones,’ he thought, as he vanished from his position and reappearing high above the city.
He expanded his perception outward, sweeping across tens of kilometers in every direction.
He didn’t find what he was looking for.
The Duke Greymark was nowhere.
’Where the hell is that man? Why hasn’t he shown himself yet?’
He knew that against what was coming, he would struggle alone, more than he was willing to admit. With the duke beside him, things would have been simpler.
But he hadn’t managed to see the man even once since arriving in the city, which had irritated him at first, the least one could do when receiving reinforcements of this caliber was acknowledge their arrival, but not showing up even now went well beyond simple disrespect.
The situation was more serious than it had been, and there was no way he was going to give everything he had to stop whatever was coming. That wasn’t what he had come here for.
’Old fossil. You want to play it this way? Fine. Let’s see how long you can stay hidden.’
Below the skies, the battle that had begun with a single order from Elena had rapidly transformed into something far more ferocious. Within minutes, the field was saturated, beasts and humans locked together, each at the other’s throat.
The casualty count climbed by the second. So did the beast count. And the merit point rankings, which nobody had the luxury of watching closely anymore, continued shifting at a brutal pace.
Names disappeared. Others rose. Those that climbed kept climbing, while those that fell rarely came back. Only the top five positions held with any consistency, occupied by the strongest fighters on the field, D and C-rank adventurers, with the E-ranks barely clinging to fifth place.
Only one position hadn’t changed at all since the battle began.
[1st - Evan (69,000 MP)]
Under any other circumstances, people would have noticed. But the chaos had grown too large, too savage for anyone to spare attention on anything that didn’t directly concern their survival.
Even the C-ranks had lost the luxury of paying attention to the rankings. They didn’t notice that their kill counts kept coming up short, that after cutting down dozens of C-rank beasts, their scores weren’t climbing the way they should have been. Higher, yes. But not nearly as high as they should have.
Evan didn’t know it, but due to his constant interference, even the bracelet was having trouble determining who had actually killed a beast. To the point that, at times, anyone close enough to the dying creature would end up being credited as the killer, receiving the merit points instead.
This had, on more than one occasion, caused much weaker teams to climb the rankings at an unusual speed, without anyone noticing.
But even if he had known, he wouldn’t have cared. Not when this battle, brutal as it was, was flooding him with ESS from all directions.
[Ding! You have killed a C-Rank (Mid-Stage) Thornmaw Ravager!]
[You have gained +10,000 ESS]
[Ding! You have killed a C-Rank (Advanced-Stage) Ironbark Stalker!]
[You have gained +20,000 ESS]
[Ding! You have killed a C-Rank (Advanced-Stage) Grimroot Devourer!]
[You have gained +20,000 ESS]
The ESS coming in from stolen kills alone had long since eclipsed what he was generating through his own direct combat and his clones combined.
---
[Name: Evan]
[Age: 14]
[Rank: D]
[ESS: 11%]
[Bloodline: None]
[Divine Clone]
> Clones: 2
[Skills]: 3
[Storage]
---
In the days before the beast tide, Evan had managed to raise his progress by 3%, reaching 7%.
That had taken nearly a week.
And yet today, in just six hours, he had pushed it from 7% to 11%.
’If only there wasn’t a cooldown,’ he thought with slight dissatisfaction.
And he was right.
The Ember Seed regenerated every sixty minutes, which put a hard ceiling on how many stolen kills he could execute. In the six hours since the battle began, he had earned approximately 37,500 ESS through his own efforts, and another 80,000 from stolen kills.
Even so, his progression remained far beyond anything a normal awakened could expect.
He was already D-rank. If everything went well, he might reach the peak within a month or two.
From there... reaching the next rank would only be a matter of time.
Throughout it all, he had kept one eye on the battle unfolding in the distance between the two B-rank elites.
He wanted to see just how strong those nearing A-rank truly were.
And what he saw did not disappoint.
’Heavens... At this rate they’re going to level the entire area,’ he thought, somewhere between awe and a quiet, honest unease.
Entire sections of the forest had been reduced to scorched earth. Deep craters pocked the terrain in every direction. And in the middle of all that destruction, two figures traded blows at a pace that was, even for him, difficult to follow.
Elena had pushed the Naga away from the battlefield with her first strike, far enough that the humans in the area were no longer at risk of becoming collateral damage. A deliberate choice, and not a small one.
Five battles like that were being fought simultaneously, scattered around the great stump in every direction, all of them making themselves felt even here, on his sector of the front, like a constant reminder that their struggle was only a footnote. The real weight of the battle was being carried elsewhere, by those strong enough to carry it.
It was in the middle of all this chaos that his senses caught something else.
Not external. Familiar.
A signal from Shadow, quiet, specific, the kind that meant something had finally changed at the location he had been monitoring.
Something was happening behind that door.
***
Deep in the underground chamber where the bodies of the missing had been stored, something was finally moving.
The sealed door, which had remained shut since Shadow had first found this place, showed signs of activity. Runes of various types materialized across its surface, arranged in a circular formation that lit up steadily, while a vertical line of light appeared from the center of the large door and split it cleanly into two equal halves.
A metallic sound followed. Then the runic formation faded.
The door, now two smaller ones, swung open, and the light from the chamber beyond spilled into the room, illuminating the silhouettes of several figures stepping through. They were dressed in strange garments that covered them from head to foot, faces hidden behind masks that left only their eyes visible.
They moved with the precision of people who had done this many times before. Routine had long since replaced any hesitation.
Some spread out to different points around the chamber, picking up various instruments and tools. Others approached the suspended sacks one by one, and in short order the bodies began to disappear, stored away into spatial objects with practiced efficiency.
Within minutes, the chamber that had been full of hanging corpses was empty. Completely. Not a body remained, not a piece of equipment, not a single tool. Nothing.
Once finished, the figures wasted no time. They filed back through the door they had come from, disappearing into the darkness beyond, one by one, without a word exchanged between them. No one spoke. No one deviated. They did what they had come to do and left, without noticing anything unusual in the room.
In a dark corner of the chamber, one that had appeared no different from any other corner, until just now, something shifted.
A shadow moved.
Silently, it slid along the junction between wall and floor, thin and elongated, difficult to notice unless you were specifically looking for it. It reached the door in the moment before it finished closing and slipped through the gap beneath it, just ahead of the runic formation that sealed it shut once more.
’Good... let’s see what the hell is going on in this place,’